HOW TO CELLAR YOUR WINE WITHOUT SPENDING $$$$!

A popular wine topic is cellaring wine and, in particular, what you need to do it properly. Most people assume it takes a large amount of space – and money – to be able to have a wine cellar. But my experience over the past 25+ years is that is definitely not the case!

The basics of “wine cellaring” come down to four things – temperature control, humidity, light and vibrations. The last two are the easiest to deal with, so let’s talk about them first.

At the most basic, wine likes to be in a dark place that isn’t moving around! That can be a fancy wine cellar, but a closet or place in the basement works just as well. As long as it is dark most of the time and there isn’t a whole lot of shaking going on.

Humidity is the next easiest factor to deal with. Too little, and the corks will dry out, causing them to literally fall into the bottles (and the wines flow out the other way). Too much and – at a minimum – your labels will slip off, making it hard to figure out what your wines are!

Here on the west coast, humidity isn’t usually big a deal. Our temperatures can spike in the summer months, but we just don’t get the level of humidity that can occur on the east coast of Canada or the U.S. in the summer. Similarly, in the winter, even if it gets cold, we still have enough humidity to avoid things drying out.

But if you don’t live here (poor you!), then at a minimum by a cheap humidity meter or sensor and put it wherever you are planning to store your wine. The 75% level is often cited as the ideal, although it is flexible. Keep track of the levels in the winter/summer. If you notice readings significantly above or below that level, you need to find a different spot (or else invest in some kind of humidity controlled cellar). Personally, humidity has never been a problem for me.

That leaves us with temperature. The main thing people forget is that there are two parts to temperature – the actual reading, and how quickly it goes up or down. Aside from being way too hot or cold (above 75 and around freezing), the actual temperature is not that big a deal. You will hear from wine geeks that “55 degrees” is ideal cellar temperature. But I have never had that in my life, and still enjoyed 15 – 20+ year wines that were in perfect shape when I drank them. Could they have aged longer with a lower temperature? Perhaps. But they were stunning when I drank them!

In my experience it is the variation of temperature over time that is actually a much bigger factor. If the temperature rises too quickly, that could definitely hurt your wine (and vice versa). But if it is gradual (even 10 – 20 degrees over a few week period, like from late spring to early summer), my experience is there is little or no impact on the wines, even over a long period of time (i.e. a decade or more). That has been happening virtually every year in my cellar, with almost no problems.

So the answer to my initial question? Find a place dark, relatively cool place that is out of the way, and put your wine there. And it will be fine!